Pakistan needs to improve its relations with India: Qureshi

QURESHI-INDIA

Rezaul H Laskar
Islamabad, Jun 28 (PTI) Pakistan needs to improve its
relations with India so that it can focus on the situation
along its western border with Afghanistan where more troops
have been deployed than at any time in the past, Foreign
Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi has said.
"I am aware that the attention of Pakistan's armed
forces is now focused on the western border. There has never
been such a big deployment on our western border in the past.
Is it not in Pakistan's interest that there should be some
betterment in the situation on our eastern front if we are to
give attention to the western front and make progress there?"
he said.
It is in Pakistan's interest to sit at the negotiating
table for talks with India to ensure political stability,
economic growth and success in the campaign against extremism
and terrorism, Qureshi said in an interview with Geo News
channel.
"Besides, I do not see any other solution," he said.
Qureshi side-stepped a question on India's demand for
action against Hafiz Saeed, the JuD chief and founder of the
banned Lashker-e-Taiba that has been blamed for the 2008
Mumbai attacks.
He said Saeed had been detained twice by the
government only to be freed on the orders of the judiciary.
"India links Hafiz Saeed sahab's issue to terrorism
and...to the Mumbai incident. Our view is that we detained him
twice and our courts freed him on the ground that the evidence
(against him) was inadequate. The judiciary is independent and
we have to respect their decision," he said.
Asked whether the ongoing India-Pakistan re-engagement
process would be able to withstand another Mumbai-like attack,
Qureshi said the two countries should ensure the process
becomes "irreversible" if they "want to achieve something".
"If you want to start and then stop as in the past, it
will be talks without results. This has happened in the past
and the whole region loses," he said.
When he was asked how the process could be made
irreversible, Qureshi replied: "It can be irreversible if both
countries see terrorism as a common challenge and I tried to
convince (Indian Home Minister P) Chidambaram when I met him
that this problem is not only India-specific.
"Only Pakistan is not affected by it. The whole world
and region is affected by it and both of us cannot tackle it
individually. There is a need for a regional approach and till
we take it as a common challenge, sit together and search for
a way out, pointing fingers at each other will not solve the
problem." MORE PTI RHL
RBT


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